Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist
Combining Science and Joyful Creativity
Sometimes, it takes a little poetry to make scientific information stick. Bowen’s Reaction Series is one of those concepts in geology that can make life a whole lot easier for students of the science. But there’s a lot there to commit to memory.
So I invite my students to write haikus about Bowen’s. I’ll share some of them here:Continue reading “Bowen’s Reaction Series Haikus”
Essentially all of the solid Earth, except for the slimy biological parts, is composed of minerals. Minerals on Earth may be divided into several categories, depending upon their composition and structure. Carbonate and phosphate minerals are important for life, in that they form the skeletons of many different groups of organisms. Native elements, like gold, are economically important. The vast majority of minerals that exist on Earth are in a class called the silicates.Continue reading “Silicate Minerals and Bowen’s Reaction Series”
This is a confusing one for students. It can sometimes be a challenge for folks who already have their PhD’s in geology.
How do you distinguish among crystal habit, cleavage, and fracture in minerals?
I talk a bit about cleavage and fracture in this older blog post. Continue reading “The Matter of Habit, Cleavage, and Fracture in Minerals”
Ok, stop me if you’ve heard this one…
“Brains” — What a zombie says
“Grains” — What a vegan zombie says
What about geology zombies?Continue reading “Things Geology Zombies Say”
On the first day of my introductory geology class, I advise my students to memorize this thing called Bowen’s Reaction Series (BRS). I tell them that knowing it will help them out tremendously throughout the class and the rest of their lives.
A great deal of history of a rock can be told by merely recognizing the minerals that are in it. Bowen’s Reaction Series provides the basic relationships of some of the most common rock-forming minerals on Earth. Not only does BRS show which minerals will be found with which other minerals, it also provides a scheme of stability and chemical composition of those minerals.Continue reading “All the Answers are in Bowen’s Reaction Series”
There are many misconceptions about geological concepts. There is a list here, developed by Kent Kirby of the University of Minnesota. This post is to debunk one of those misconceptions. There will be others. Find them here.
Misconception: The edge of a continent is the same thing as a plate boundary.
Continue reading “Misconception – Continents Are the Same As Tectonic Plates”
Most vertebrate paleontologists agree that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs. Many, including me, refer to birds as dinosaurs. Sometimes, we add the term ‘avian’ or ‘non-avian’ to the front of dinosaur, to distinguish between modern, flying birds and their relatives, and the big scary ones that went extinct 65 million years ago.
The interesting outcome is that what this means is that, at least in the United States, we traditionally have a huge family meal on the fourth Thursday of November, in which we consume vast quantities of roasted dinosaur meat.Continue reading “Your Holiday Dinosaur”
Sometimes, we as professorial-types, come up with some goofy things to teach some fundamental lessons. Thus was born the continent of Cupcakeia, and its accreted terrane of Frosteringia.
In teaching, one often learns where the great misunderstandings are. Geology has its own set of problems, most of which I face each Fall when I teach my introduction to the geological sciences course.
Sometimes it’s not apparent, even after teaching a course for years, that certain things are never explained properly.
It’s been pointed out to me that there’s come confusion about the term ‘porphyry.’ First of all, this word seems to lack an appropriate number of vowels, but the y’s stand in for missing vowels.Continue reading “What Does it Mean to See Porphyry?”
Every science – actually every discipline any person can study – has some fundamental basics that are absolutely important.
You can’t study language without knowing the difference between a noun and a verb (and how that works with adjectives and adverbs). You can’t study biology without knowing what a species is. And you can’t understand geology without knowing what the difference between a rock and a mineral is.
In teaching an introductory geology class, you might guess I spend quite a bit of time discussing the latter. I always think it should be obvious. But the only obvious thing is that it isn’t obvious.Continue reading “If I Were a Mineral, Would You Rock My World?”
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist